Sailor Moon Vol. #13

What They SayAs the Negamoon's attacks on the city continue, Rini comes to a decision. The time has come for her to lead Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts back into the future to confront the evil Prince Diamond and his Dark Crystal! But first the Sailor Scouts must find their way through the dimensions of time and space in their greatest challenge yet. Don't miss the excitement in the 13th volume of Sailor Moon on DVD.

The Review!Sailor Moon serves up another disc of two parts, as the standalone episodes come to an end and the story moves to the future for the traditional end-of-series showdowns.

Audio:As usual for Sailor Moon, audio is English-language only. Presented in 2.0 stereo, it's best described as adequate as only the songs and transitions make any real use of the soundstage - all dialog and effects are locked to the centre. That said, it's clear and without any noticeable distortion or encoding defects.

Video:Video is presented in its original 1.33:1 full-frame format, and barring some frame jitter and graininess that give away the age of the show, isn't in bad shape. Colours come across quite well, although DiC's brightly-coloured CGI scene transitions feel a bit out-of-place. There are no obvious encoding problems.

Packaging: No packaging was provided with our review copy.

Menu:As usual, a very simple menu is used. The episodes on the disc are listed on the left, giving direct access to them, while the right features Sailor Moon striking a pose with Sailor Pluto and Tuxedo Mask behind her. There are no submenus.

Extras: None.

Content: (please note that content portions of a review will contain spoilers)As this volume begins, we're still stuck in Monster of the Week territory, as Emerald's efforts to both channel the power of Wiseman's Dark Crystal into the 20th century and deal with the Sailor Scouts continue. Amy is her first target, after Emerald sets up one of her points of power in her cram school. The brains of the Scouts also has to deal with being labelled a cheater, after Melvyn discovers a set of cheat sheets in her desk after an exam. Of course, Amy's good name is eventually cleared in the end, but not before the name-calling she's subjected to causes a crisis of confidence in her own abilities.

Rini takes centre-stage in the next episode, as Emerald chooses another institute of learning as the target of her plans – this time, Rini's school. The pink-haired one has been making use of her outgoing personality to make quite a few new friends in class, so when she returns to school after having been off with the 'flu for a while she's surprised to find her classmates beating seven bells out of each other – and they'd quite like to beat Rini up, as well. It's all thanks to the dark power that Emerald's been channelling thorough the place, meaning it's up to Sailor Moon and the others to deal with the problem and restore normality.

These two episodes could almost be watched on autopilot, as they stick firmly to the usual Sailor Moon formula – some slice-of-life stuff, a little scheming by Emerald as she works on her plans, and a battle against this week's villain before life gets back to its usual routine. It's pure fluff, reasonably enjoyable, but there's nothing here that's going to hugely surprise you.

The final three episodes really begin to pick up the pace, though, as Rini finally decides she's had enough of living in the past & that the time has come for her to return to the future and save her mom. Serena and the others are quickly persuaded to come and join the fight, and so their journey begins – first through the Time Gateway, guarded by the mysterious Sailor Pluto, and then through the deserted Crystal Tokyo. There are a lot of plot-heavy scenes here as it's finally explained who Rini & her mother and father are (although this shouldn't really surprise anyone), who Diamond and the other Negamoon people are, and how they came to be. It all serves to fill in a lot of the backstory to several characters and sets the tone for the series-ending battles ahead.

Key points to look out for are Emerald's growing jealousy as Diamond takes a shine to Sailor Moon, leading to another case of back-stabbing by the good folk of the Negamoon, and Sapphire's growing unease at what he sees as Wiseman's manipulating of Diamond. He's noticing that Wiseman seems to be operating to his own agenda and that the rewards he's promising may not come to pass. While Diamond dismisses his concerns, Sapphire's on to something, which is clearly shown both by how Wiseman makes use of Emerald's jealousy and by his meeting with Rini near the end of the disc.

In Summary:Sailor Moon is always at its best when it gets away from the routine episodes and into the end-of-season stories. We're not quite there yet, but the pace of events is definitely picking up and a lot of explanations are given in these episodes that help the story start to pull together & set events up nicely for the final volume.